Breaking Dawn- 13 embryos is wonderful news, hun!
That is so crazy you were awake during retrieval. I know it's the norm at some clinics, but we do general anesthesia at the one I go to. (I respond absolutely horribly to conscious sedation and am not allowed to use it anymore, so I am amazed by how well many ladies respond to it.) So very happy for you! I hope you get many healthy blastocysts.
I think normal blastocyst response is 40% of embryos- so you could have 5-6 blasty babies come week's end!
Peachy- Usually, our clinic waits a cycle before doing another round, but since we can't afford to fly back to the US and then fly here again (another $3200) in a couple months they're rushing it for us I think. I've been looking into it, and from what I've found, the most recent studies into IVF show that it is generally fine to do back to back cycles- just most clinics don't do them since historically it hasn't been the norm.
Okay, so here's the bit about sperm that we've learned in the last couple days. Sorry it's a novel; we've had a lot of information thrown our way.
From what our RE said and the research we've been doing, we found out that motility isn't gained until the sperm are mature and out of the testes and this process is very close to the time of ejaculation (within a couple weeks), so it is a different system than the long maturation process. Because of this, it is the first thing to get better if issues are due to a nutrient deficiency and not to a hormone issue. (Forward progression is our biggest issue right now.) Luckily, we're most likely looking at deficiency since: 1) Things used to be totally fine. 2) DH's most recent hormone panel was normal. 3) DH has been strictly dieting for several months, cutting out all grains and legumes as well as most carbs including fruit... *facepalm* (Yeah... we didn't realize what that could do...) With correction of a nutrient deficiency, we've been told that sperm motility can begin to recover in a matter of days- especially if a man ejaculates frequently to clear out the bad sperm.
As for morphology, development of the body and tail is the very last stage of development before sperm leave the testes to develop motility. This means it is also in the last month of development. So nutrient deficiencies can show a very quick drop in quality, but also a very quick improvement if corrected. (This is our second biggest issue, so here's hoping!)
Lastly, deficiencies in anti-oxidants, post morphological and motile development, can cause sperm to die/be killed by the body once they are complete. DH's number of live sperm have been getting worse and worse, but there are still a ton of dead/dying ones there. (This is our final concern, so if it's anti-oxidant deficiency, we very well could see a swift recovery with this as well.)
Interestingly, we've also found several studies showing over the last decade that sperm production time varies from man to man. Some men can produce sperm from start to finish in as little as 42 days! (If DH does have any underlying hormone imbalance we're not seeing, lets hope he is lucky enough to be one of those guys!)
Phew! So that's what we learned today.
Anyway, so DH will begin supplements now and will have a SA in a month to check progress.If our current cycle doesn't work out, then this next cycle we will do standard IVF if his sperm have recovered, half IVF half PICSI if they are better enough, and PICSI if the sperm are not of high enough quality yet to trust with fertilization. No matter the result of this current cycle, even if we do manage to eek out a BFP, DH is still to be on supplements and have a SA at month's end.
PS: Thanks for bearing with me through all of that. It REALLY helps to explain it to someone else. Still trying to fully get my head around it all.
Whatever they do, they do have great success rates- and almost 10,000 babies born over the last 20 years!
